


Common Ground

by silver_fish



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Late Night Conversations, M/M, Scars, Trauma, dont get the wrong idea this fic is aang centric LMAO, i imagine this set between the firebending masters and the boiling rock, its only actually romantic if you squint but
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:13:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25041448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silver_fish/pseuds/silver_fish
Summary: Aang has never really thought about Zuko's scar before.
Relationships: Aang & Zuko (Avatar), Aang/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 43
Kudos: 419





	Common Ground

**Author's Note:**

> im working very hard on publishing my novel right now, working two jobs, etc etc....BUT. i rewatched atla and aang is apparently now my favourite character (rip zuko and azula LOL) so obviously i was obligated to write fic about his traumatic "near" death experience. i've never finished an atla fic before despite loving the show since i was a kid! (i do have an orphaned korra fic out there though...would not recommend hunting that down.) anyway, the point is that even though i'm mere weeks away from my publication date, in the middle of camp nano, and working 50 hour weeks.........i had an itch that needed scratching. maybe i'll come back with more atla content in the fall. who knows! until then, please enjoy :)

Sometimes it still hurts.

It isn’t so much of a physical pain, not really. A phantom of one, something that chases him from his nightmares, leaves him staring up at the stars wondering if the lightning ever left him at all.

Ever since the fall of Ba Sing Se, Aang has felt unbalanced. It makes sense—his seventh chakra is blocked, completely inaccessible. And maybe he ought to be grateful that he doesn’t have to choose anymore, but any relief he feels about it is more around the fact that he can’t enter the Avatar State. And that isn’t something he wants to be thinking, either, not when he knows his mastery of the Avatar State could prove as crucial as that of the four elements themselves.

Roku told him, though. If he dies in the Avatar State, then that’s the end. The Avatar will never be reborn.

And he _did_. He would have died if not for Katara.

He can’t really see the scar on his back, but he knows it is worse than the other one. One where the lightning entered him; another where it left him.

He knows, then: it _did_ leave him.

So why does it feel like it _hasn’t_?

He tries not to think about it, but then there is Zuko. And it isn’t exactly Zuko himself—Zuko, who was there, who helped her—that makes him think of it. Rather, it is the scar on his face, so like what Aang sees when he inspects the bottom of his foot now, what he imagines he would see if he had the courage to look at the other one.

He’s never stopped to think about it before, not really. He’s always known better than to judge based on appearances, known better than to dig into the history of something that is obviously painful.

But he wakes up tonight, his back tingling, and he can’t really help it.

Zuko hasn’t been with them very long yet. There is still a distance between him and the others, more space between his bedroll and theirs. Aang stands and skirts around their little group. The moon and the stars illuminate the area, light up the faces of his slumbering companions. But as Katara, Sokka, and Toph sleep on, Aang’s gaze is drawn to Zuko.

He looks a lot less peaceful than the others.

Aang sighs, lowering himself down and crossing his legs. He turns his gaze briefly upward, then drops it down to Zuko again. He doesn’t _mean_ to stare, but it’s so...massive. It must have hurt, Aang thinks, whatever happened to him.

With some effort, he tears his eyes away again and stares down, instead, at his hands. He knows he ought to try to get more sleep—that he has already had his brush with sleep deprivation recently and it didn’t exactly do him any favours—and yet he feels wide awake, nerves tingling, the remnants of an attack long passed…

Zuko’s eyes open, and he jumps.

He isn’t sure when he started looking at Zuko again, but apparently he did. Their gazes meet and he tries for a smile, which Zuko does not return.

“Sorry,” Aang says quickly. “I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

Zuko’s narrowed eyes relax. Slowly, he pushes himself up to sitting. “You didn’t.”

Aang makes to stand, but then Zuko adds, “I wasn’t sleeping well anyway. Is, uh...is there something you need?”

Unbidden, Aang thinks back to when Zuko—the Blue Spirit—saved him all those months ago. He wants to say that Zuko is very different from how he was then, but…

“Aang?”

“How did you get your scar?” he blurts, then winces and shakes his head. “No, never mind, sorry, I—”

“Don’t you know already?”

His jaw snaps shut painfully. He shakes his head again.

“Oh.” Zuko looks away from him, face darkening with the long shadows of the night. “I sort of assumed everyone did,” he mutters. “I never wanted any pity.”

Aang’s fingers brush against the scar on his back, the rough and damaged skin that will never return to normal, that is there to remind him, he supposes, of his failure in Ba Sing Se.

Suddenly, Zuko stands up. Aang blinks, arms dropping to his sides again, as Zuko reaches a hand down to him.

He takes it and lets Zuko hoist him to his feet. He drops Aang’s hand almost immediately, but Aang doesn’t really feel its loss; Zuko is walking away and he’s not telling Aang to stop following him.

They come up to a nearby ledge. Aang watches as Zuko sits down, feet dangling over the edge, then glances back at him—expectantly, without malice.

Aang sits beside him.

“I guess I always thought everyone knew because so many people saw it happen,” he says after a long moment. “I’m done being ashamed of it. I told Katara before that I thought this scar marked me, but it doesn’t. The only one who should be ashamed of it is my father.”

He sounds earnest, like he is really trying to believe it. Aang would like to believe it too, if only to spare Zuko’s feelings, but...

“Your father did that to you?”

A short, sharp nod. “I was just a kid. I didn’t really know any better. But if that’s what respect means to my father, then I’m done with trying to respect him. I made my choice.”

Aang looks out towards the sky. The stars seem a lot closer here, their toes reaching down to the clouds. By all means, it is the perfect summer night.

“Well, I’m glad you did,” he eventually says. “I mean, you’re a pretty good teacher.”

A pause, and then—

“I don’t think that’s why you asked about it.”

He inhales sharply, straightening up. It runs from his centre to his foot, from his fourth chakra to his first, from his heart to his foundations. Sometimes, he can still feel it, like her lightning never left him at all.

“Do you really think it doesn’t mark you anymore?” he whispers, head bowed. “Doesn’t it still mean something?”

Zuko is quiet for a moment, as if thinking. “I don’t really know,” he finally says. “I’m probably just telling you what I want to be true.”

Aang knew that, though. Zuko’s not a very good liar. Especially not to himself.

“If it does mean something, though… Then I guess it could mean that I changed. My father doesn’t rule me anymore.”

“That’s good,” Aang mutters. “You should think of it like that.”

“Doesn’t sound like you think it’s so good.” He doesn’t sound irritated, though.

Aang sighs. “No, I do. I guess I was just thinking that I wish I could be more like you.”

Zuko stares at him. “You’re kidding, right?”

“No.” Aang folds his hands in his lap, watching his fingers closely. “When I was learning to master the Avatar State, I had to open my chakras. I faced a lot of my problems then. It was the only way. But now it doesn’t even matter. You said...you learned to firebend all over again. You let go of your anger. I understand now that firebending isn’t what I once thought it was, but I think that...my failure with fire isn’t the thing I’m most ashamed of anymore.”

“There can’t be much you _have_ to be ashamed of.” Zuko crosses his arms over his chest, looking forward again. “Even if you hurt Katara once—”

“Ba Sing Se,” Aang says, before it swallows him whole. “And then—the eclipse, too. I failed both times and...and people got hurt.”

“People got hurt,” Zuko repeats.

“Yeah. But I’m supposed to protect them, and I didn’t. I know it’s not all my fault—”

“ _You_ got hurt,” Zuko says, and then seems almost as surprised by it as Aang is. He doesn’t stop, though: “Azula hurt you pretty badly. Or, well, I think she did, anyway. Have you ever stopped thinking about others long enough to think about yourself?”

Aang closes his eyes against the twilight breeze. “It’s not about me. I’m fine. The people of Ba Sing Se and the invasion force aren’t.”

“What do you want me to tell you?” Zuko throws his hands up, frustrated. “I don’t even know why you’re upset!”

“I’m not upset.”

“It’s the middle of the night!”

Aang glances over at him. Even though his voice is raised, his posture changed, Aang doesn’t think he’s really angry. His anger has already been spent—and Aang was never its target in the first place.

“All right,” he concedes. “Maybe I’m a little upset. But you don’t need to do anything about it. I know I need to move on. I’m sorry I made you talk about this, Zuko. I shouldn’t have asked.”

Just as he is rising, Zuko’s hand wraps tightly around his wrist, pulling him down again with a little more force than Aang thinks is really necessary, but he doesn’t get chance to say so before Zuko is speaking:

“My father gave me this scar,” he says, “and my sister gave you that one. That’s what’s on your mind, isn’t it?” His grip loosens, falls away. “You must hate me.”

“What?” Aang yelps. “Why would I— _Azula_ hit me, not you!”

“But I was there. I helped her!”

“I don’t think you would’ve killed me, Zuko.” With his next exhale, the tension seems to drain from the air completely. “It’s not about me, anyway. Or, I guess it is, but—I just mean, I was too weak.”

When Zuko says nothing, Aang turns to him again, exasperated. “Aren’t you going to argue with me some more?”

“No.” A funny look crosses Zuko’s face. “I was just wondering if this is how my uncle felt talking to me after I was banished.”

“Huh?”

“I didn’t want to listen to anything he said, because I had my own ideas about my life. I thought that if I could just be the son my father wanted, then I would be happy. I was wrong. That person doesn’t exist. You probably can’t be the person you think you’re supposed to be either. You’re not Avatar Roku or any of the others, even if you, uh, sort of are or...whatever. But that’s not the point! I just mean, you’re...I don’t know. You just...I mean…”

Aang laughs and he stops, turning away in embarrassment.

“Thanks, Zuko.” He pulls his knees up to his chest. His smile slips away again. “I guess you already know all about scars, then, huh?”

“...Do they bother you?”

“I don’t know,” he admits. “Sometimes...I guess it’s kinda—well, I’m definitely imagining it, but sometimes I think it still hurts. But I hardly even remember what it felt like in the first place. I woke up and I didn’t even remember what had happened.”

Silence, for a beat.

And then: “Maybe you’re not imagining it.”

Aang’s fingers curl up painfully, shaky fisted hands barely hidden from Zuko’s view.

“I thought I needed to regain my honour. Well, I guess I did have to do that, but—that’s not the point. I just mean that I was taking all the...everything I felt toward my father, for doing this to me, and was making it into something else. It’s taken me years to understand that. What I’m trying to say...well, maybe it’s not all about Ba Sing Se.”

It entered him _here_ , left him _there_ , tore apart his connection to the cosmos, to his past lives, to his power.

But his power is not something exclusive to the Avatar State.

“I would have died,” he says, fingernails biting into his skin. He screws his stinging eyes shut tight. “I think I sorta did, but Katara brought me back. My life isn’t just my own, though. It’s not even just all the other Avatars. I’m the last of my people. When I die, so do the Air Nomads.”

“That’s still not really about you,” Zuko points out. “You say your life isn’t _just_ your own, but it doesn’t sound like you have a part in it at all.”

“But it _is_. My culture is a part of me.”

“That’s a lot for one person.”

Aang opens his eyes, peeks up at him. “But being heir to the Fire Nation isn’t?”

Zuko winces. “I’m sorry about your people. What happened to them—”

“Wasn’t _your_ fault,” Aang says firmly. “And I already know I can’t wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t left when I did. I can’t wonder what could have happened differently in Ba Sing Se, either. This is what happened. I have no choice but to accept it.”

“You don’t have to repress it to accept it, though, do you?” Zuko pauses. A small smile tugs at his lips. “Maybe I did learn a thing or two from Uncle.”

Aang remembers Iroh, not a retired Fire Nation general but an uncle desperate to save his nephew… He remembers the Iroh of Ba Sing Se, someone dedicated to the people he loved rather than the empire he had been taught he had to love. He _was_ pretty wise, just like Toph said. _A complicated past_ , that’s what Zuko said about Iroh.

“You must miss him.”

Zuko’s eyebrow furrows. “What?”

“Your uncle. You must really miss him.”

“...Yeah, I guess.”

Aang stretches his legs out again. His hands fall back into his lap, relaxed. “I don’t think about it all the time,” he says. “Mostly just in the night. Otherwise, it’s like they’re not even there.”

“You dream about it?”

The connection is so easy, like he has walked this road before too.

“Yes.” Aang turns to Zuko fully, now. “Does it ever go away?”

“No.” This is easy too. A question he has already asked himself a thousand times. “I guess that’s sort of the point of scars, isn’t it?”

Aang reaches back, fingers ghosting over it. “I guess it is.”

Something soft and warm against his back has him jumping, but Zuko doesn’t pull away. His hand seeks out Aang’s, fingers wrapping up in his, and then gently brings it away from there again, away from the scar, away from Ba Sing Se and Azula and his countless failures, the thing he is most ashamed of.

Aang opens his mouth to say something, only to be overwhelmed by a sudden yawn.

“You should get some more sleep.” Zuko goes to stand, but Aang reaches up for him, pulling him back down, a perfect mirror of their earlier position.

“You sleep too far away, you know that?”

“What?”

“Come sleep next to me,” Aang insists. “Being close isn’t such a bad thing, is it?”

Zuko shakes Aang’s hand away. “All right, fine. I’ll sleep next to you.”

But Aang doesn’t think he’s imagining the smile in Zuko’s voice, the pleasure beneath his irritated exterior.

They rise together, stopping to collect Zuko’s things before rejoining the group. Aang settles down by Appa while Zuko awkwardly readjusts his sleeping arrangements. There’s a kind, cool breeze; it winds around Aang’s back, summer’s welcoming embrace.

“Thanks,” he says, so quietly he isn’t sure if Zuko will even hear it.

But he does. Of course he does. He is so much closer now than he was before.

“Good night, Aang.”

There is silence. Stillness. A distinct lack of pain, a storm drawn out of himself—partially, at least. Something shared, a burden halved.

It doesn’t take long to fall asleep again. When he does, he is at peace.

Lightning cannot strike him here.

**Author's Note:**

> comments and kudos are always appreciated! xx
> 
> (p.s. catch me on twitter [@laphicets](https://twitter.com/laphicets) or tumblr [@kohakhearts](https://kohakhearts.tumblr.com) for writing updates. i also sometimes take writing requests on both!)
> 
> my friend illustrated a scene from this fic and it’s stunning! check it out [here](https://twitter.com/eva_epiphanies/status/1293289821629292545?s=21)!


End file.
